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Refusenik [US - IVAW] - Jeffrey Smith

April 21, 2008

This article, by Robert Koehler, was distributed by Tribune Media Services, March 19, 2008

Where War Meets Peace

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“I trained my weapon on him,” Kristopher Goldsmith said. It was a little boy, 6 years old maybe, standing on a roof, menacing the soldiers with a stick. “I was thinking, I hate these Iraqis who throw rocks. I could kill this kid.”
OK, America, let’s look through the sights of Goldsmith’s rifle for a long, long half-minute or so, draw a bead on the boy’s heart, fondle the trigger — what to do? The soldier’s decision is our decision.
This is occupied Iraq: the uncensored version, presented to us with relentless, at times unbearable honesty over four intense days last week in a historic gathering outside Washington, D.C., of returning vets, many of them broken and bitter about what they were forced to do, and what’s been done to them, in sometimes two, three, four tours of duty in the biggest mistake in American history.
“These are the times that try men’s souls,” Thomas Paine wrote in 1776. “The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
The vets who told their stories last week, in an event at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md., sponsored by Iraq Vets Against the War, are the “winter soldiers” of the war on terror, standing in service to their country by bearing the truth to it, just as Vietnam vets held the first Winter Soldier gathering 37 years ago in Detroit, in the wake of the My Lai massacre revelations, to let the American public know that that massacre wasn’t an aberration but, rather, the logical result of our brutal, official policy there.
Once again, the crisis we are in is the result of an official policy that has dehumanized an entire country, an entire people. Once again, we are waging a war that can only be “won” when the American people themselves demand an end to it. The men and women who spoke last week brought not just the truth but an imperative as urgent as a live grenade:
Unconditional withdrawal of all troops and contractors from Iraq NOW; full benefits for all returning vets; reparations for the Iraqi people, so they can rebuild their country on their own terms.
I was able to attend two days of the Winter Soldier gathering. What I witnessed was a convergence of forces of historical significance, as angry, idealistic warriors, horrified by what they saw and were ordered to do during their time in the military, ashamed of what they sometimes did willingly within the context of racist arrogance that is the occupation of Iraq, reclaimed their humanity by declaring themselves peace warriors. I found myself at the heart of the American conscience: the place where war meets peace.
To experience the full impact of this event, you can listen to the testimony, among other places, at ivaw.org. In this column, I have space for the briefest of summaries, as GIs up to the rank of captain talked about the realities of the occupation of Iraq.
House raids: Over and over again, the speakers gave variations of these words of Jeffrey Smith: “We had everyone in house, including children, zip-tied on the front lawn (when we) realized we were in the wrong house. So we went to another house.” Or these of Matthew Childers: “It seemed like we raided countless residences — 3 a.m., our semiautomatics out, screaming at them in a language they didn’t understand. We rarely found anything.”
Detainees: Common themes were the beatings, the sleep deprivation. Childers again: “They were beaten, humiliated, teased with food and water. These guys were in our custody for a week and I didn’t see them eat the whole time. A Marine wiped his ass with an Iraqi’s hat and tried to feed it to a blindfolded Iraqi — who was desperate for food and tried to eat it.”
Racism and general disrespect: The Iraqis were “hadjis” — the equivalent, of course, of gooks or untermenschen. Speaker after speaker talked about receiving no cultural training in boot camp, but plenty of bayonet training. Matt Howard: “We treated Iraq like our own personal cesspool.” Bryan Casler: “I saw the destruction of the Babylon ruins — people breaking off chunks to bring home; joyriding up walls. There was a complete lack of understanding.”
With all this in mind — with an awareness that as many as a million Iraqis have died since the invasion, that 4 or 5 million have been displaced — let us peer once again at the little boy in the sights of Goldsmith’s rifle.
“I was so close to killing a 6-year-old boy,” he said. “I was put in that position by the occupation of Iraq.” He could have taken the kid out, without consequence, but mastered the impulse, mastered his own drilled-in contempt for Iraqi life, and lowered his rifle.
He completed his tour, saw the horror, felt the death of his own youth, came home a severe alcoholic who got no help from the Army. Shortly before he was due to be discharged, his platoon was locked into an 18-month redeployment (part of the president’s troop surge); instead of going back, he tried to kill himself with pills and vodka. He failed at that, was hospitalized and ultimately received a general discharge from the Army with a “misconduct, serious offense” notation. He lost his college benefits. His life is shattered. He delivers pizza on Wednesdays to get by.
As he finished his testimony, Goldsmith named his commanding officers and announced, “I have a message for you.” He sprang to his feet, held his fingers in a V and cried: “Peace!”

March 17, 2008

CAMBRIDGE - Liz Jackson's eyes were fixed on a screen showing a live broadcast of anguished testimonies by Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans describing what they had seen and done during their combat tours.
Jeffery Smith recalled how his Army unit beat and humiliated Iraqi prisoners. Former Marine Bryan Casler recounted how fellow Marines urinated and defecated into food and gave it to Iraqi children. Former Marine Matthew Childers talked about how he used to humiliate Iraqi civilians during predawn raids on their homes. When he described turning away an Iraqi father who was asking American troops to help the badly burned baby he carried in his arms, Jackson began to weep silently.
"These soldiers are saying: 'I'm complicit,' " said Jackson, 29, a community organizer from Cambridge. "But every American citizen who saw this happen and isn't out there protesting is complicit. I include myself."
Hundreds of soldiers and Marines from across the country are testifying this weekend in the "Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan" hearings, a four-day event held at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md. The event is named after the 1971 Winter Soldier hearings in which Vietnam War veterans testified in a Detroit hotel about war crimes they had participated in or witnessed.
The hearings, which began Thursday and end today, were organized by the Iraq Veterans Against War, a national antiwar organization, and broadcast live in locations across the country. The veterans who testified called for an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.
"In the United States today people's minds have gotten off the war. We are trying to get their attention," said Paul Shannon, whose New England United antiwar network organized the live screening shown yesterday in First Parish Unitarian Church in Harvard Square, in a side room that was packed with about 300 antiwar activists, former troops, local residents like Jackson, and curious passersby.
On Friday, more than a dozen Iraq and Afghanistan veterans from Massachusetts drove to Silver Spring to observe and participate in the hearings.
One of them, Ian J. Lavallee, an Iraq war veteran from Jamaica Plain, said in a phone interview yesterday that although he was not planning to testify, he wanted to attend the hearings because it was his "duty to the people of the world" to condemn an "occupation that is being waged in our name and with our tax dollars."
"We dehumanized people. The way we spoke about them, the way we destroyed their livelihoods, their families, doing raids, manhandling them, throwing the men on the ground while their family was crying," recalled Lavallee, 23, who served in Iraq in 2005 and was honorably discharged from the Army in 2006 after he attempted suicide.
"I became a person I never thought I would become," he said. "It really upset me that I did these things."
From a folding chair in the Cambridge church, a fellow veteran, Patrick Dougherty, watched the hearings intently.
"It just takes me back there," he said. The testimonies reminded him "how malicious we were over there."
Dougherty, who was deployed to Baghdad and Mahmoudiya for 14 months beginning in 2003, "felt from the start that we had no intention to win hearts and minds," he said, his hands nervously running from the stubble on his chin to his hair and back to his chin.
"The way we treated our detainees like animals, kept them in cages in the hot sun all day - " said Dougherty, 24, who studies biology at the University of Massachusetts and lives in Fields Corner.
Dougherty was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He said he had considered testifying at the Winter Soldier hearings, but his doctor talked him out of it because the event could conjure memories too difficult for the veteran to bear.
Most of the people who came to watch the testimonies were members of antiwar groups in Massachusetts. Jennifer Magee, who works at Harvard University Art Museums, came because her roommate, an antiwar activist, had told her about it.
"These are the stories you never hear in the paper," said Magee. "It's really powerful to hear from the veterans."
Charles Gluck, a social worker from Long Island who was visiting Cambridge yesterday, wandered in after he saw a poster outside the church advertising the event.
"Some of the things I heard were shocking," Gluck said after listening to several testimonies. "My hope is that a movement like this would expand and . . . give people opportunity to make a more informed decision as to who the next president will be."